George Goularas
b. 1966, Australia.

BIOGRAPHY:   While initially studying Architecture and Arts at Melbourne University, George Goularas quickly diversified his skills at the fringes of independent film and theatre through writing, acting, art direction, photography and music production before becoming deluded with the idea that he had potential as a filmmaker.

This obsession led to the usual struggle of endeavouring to self-fund half a dozen difficult and obscure experimental-narrative short films.

He now focuses on developing slightly less difficult and obscure feature film projects.

	Don't Blink

CRITICAL OVERVIEW:   The early works of George Goularas (under pseudonyms Random or Ray) were difficult abstract mosaics; multiple fragmented narratives float and interweave around themes of loss, isolation and madness.

Apart from the fragility of identity, his films tend to explore the nature of consciousness at its most essential. Don’t Blink (1998, 18 mins), for example, portrays several impaired protagonists from a schizophrenic point of view. The audience is left to witness an aphasic separation of language (visual and aural) and meaning.

On a structural level he usually combines an intense meditative compositional style with a precise, agile, almost dyslexic editing technique that functions more on a neurological level than a narrative one. This vivid quality was hinted at by Adrian Martin in an early critique (see Bibliography) of For Xaviera Arabella (1989, 15 mins), and In a Few Words (1989, 9 mins): "His films are severely poetic, severely obscure....films that streaked by, that escape me, that I wouldn’t pretend to much ‘decipher’, films that one hallucinates more than remembers."

George Goularas' most recent project Theatre Games (2003, 22 mins) is a collaborative work done with a group of intellectually disabled young adults who grapple with improvisational acting. After some banal but humorous false starts they slowly begin to relinquish their inhibitions and perform with bizarre imagination.

Without guile or pretence they eventually create a cops and robbers drama where the unpredictable reigns. An autistic sense of repetition drives their performances. Their persistence is musical.

Theatre Games has a work in progress feel, an impromptu film about impromptu performances - performances that are rich, funny and absurd, indicative of an increasing sense of black humour in George's work.

Overall, his films (and other writings) have evolved to a more accessible form, yet they have not lost the energetic experimental edge that his earlier work possesses. His more recent video collaborations on ethical and social issues have, ironically, a lighter playful quality but retain a distinctive kinetic complexity.

FILMOGRAPHY:

	Fingerprints of You

For Xaviera Arabella (1989, 15 mins, Super 8)

In a Few Words (1989, 9 mins, Super 8)

Fingerprints of You (1994, 12 mins, Super 8)

When (1996, 6 mins, Super 8)

Don’t Blink (1998, 18 mins, 16mm)

Cinema Terrorismo (2000, 7 mins, video)

"How I Can Stop Racism..." (2003, 6 mins, video)
Collaborative short film with the students of Abbotsford Primary School for ‘Cultural Diversity Week’ - March, 2003 - organised by SBS Radio.

	Cinema Terrorismo

Theatre Games (2003, 22 mins, video)
Collaborative short documentary on improvised acting classes with the intellectually disabled.

FESTIVALS/AWARDS:

Don't Blink
Finalist 1998 Dendy Awards, Sydney Film Festival
Finalist 1999 ATOM Awards

THEATRE:

Lemniscate (2002)
20 minute short play written for the
Melbourne Writers’ Theatre.
Performed at Carlton Courthouse - (3-20 July, 2002).
Producer: Ray Mooney.
Published by ‘Beilby Books’ in a collection of short plays - ‘School: The Irreverent Reveries’

	In a Few Words

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY:

"Notes on Six Secrets", by Adrian Martin, Cantrills Filmnotes, No. 61-62, May 1990.

"This Integration: The films of George Goularas", by Bill Mousoulis, Melbourne Super 8 Film Group Newsletter, Issue 112, April 1996.

"A Guide to Greek-Australian filmmakers", by Bill Mousoulis, Innersense website, 1998.

Melbourne independent filmmakers - a web resource is compiled by Bill Mousoulis.